Recent Headlines

“Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful businesses, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God Save the King!”

— The proclamation from the Riot Act (1714-5) which, when read, authorized British authorities to disperse unlawful assemblies by force without liability, and provided the death penalty for destruction of property, repealed in 1973.

The Riot Act grew out of incessant political, economic and social unrest in 17th and 18th century Britain. The government and properties classes saw that assemblies often turned violent, which allowed the criminal class an excuse to loot and burn. There was plenty of poverty, grievance and anger; some people were looking for riots to exploit. A politician who lacked backing in Parliament referred to his “mobile party”— the people in the streets. (This was the origin of “mob.”)

Reading the Riot Act often prevented trouble, but politicians could also use it murderously, as in the 1819 massacre of Luddites in Manchester.

English law being English, some rioters escaped punishment because a justice of the peace or mayor forgot to add “God Save the King.” During the 1780 Gordon Riots, which began as an anti-Catholic demonstration but deteriorated into rampant looting that destroyed part of London, lawyers argued that force could not be used because the mobs could not hear the reading of the Riot Act. Sense prevailed, and the army restored order, though at a cost of many lives. Likewise, in the anti-conscription riots in New York in 1863, hesitation allowed things to get out of hand; the military finally had to kill at least a thousand, mostly immigrants.

Mobs have been part of urban civilization. The late Roman Republic was wracked by rioting, which the Caesars ended with the Praetorian Guard and also by abolishing popular elections.

Liberal society has philosophical problems with the existence of mobs. We tend either to excuse or try to ignore them, I think, because admitting that some part of humanity is feral, kept in order only by conscience or discipline, that in any society many are aggrieved, and that people en masse in their anonymity may shed all sense of responsibility, is politically incorrect.

History has usually shown that cowing a coalescing mob early saves lives and property. This can be done by a real show of force; a mob by nature is composed of cowards. Failure to face down a forming mob, giving it a collective sense of power, too often leads to greater destruction and bloodshed in the end.

In the 1960s, we permitted racial-based rioting to reach calamitous proportions before politicians screwed up courage to insert the Army or National Guard. Police departments now train to use force when authorized, as doctrine.

Looters are usually criminal elements; I suspect this will hold true of rioters recently afoot in London. In this century many kinds of mobs may roil civilization. Today the British eschew force, considering it barbaric. The future may show which attitude is correct.